Control Your Card-board, Control Your Life

SINCE ALBERT JONES filed his U.S. patent for corrugated paper packing material in 1871, cardboard products have played the cart to globalization’s horse. Cheaper and lighter than a crate and more protective than paper or straw, cardboard has made myriad goods affordable and deliverable to just about anywhere. From carrying glass vials of medicine at the turn of the 20th century to entire couches at the beginning of the 21st, cardboard is a linchpin of modern life.

- Mike Riggs

So why do so many of us hate it so much? A few months back, I found myself losing sleep over the cardboard pile in our garage. It began with the disposable cocoons for a couch, bed frame, and mattress. As time schlepped on, the pile grew. Boxes for a dehumidifier (summer) and then a humidifier (winter) followed, along with various brown containers from Amazon and Walmart. I’d planned, as one does, to break them down as they arrived and put them in the recycling bin. But this only works if you do it, and I didn’t.

When my wife and I realized getting rid of the pile would take months of filling the recycling bin with nothing but cardboard, we devised a new plan: drive the pile to a nearby county drop-off. Then the pile outgrew our cars.

Man plans; cardboard laughs. Man gives up.